Saturday, July 15, 2017

A Baker’s Double Dozen of Neglected Russian Stories – No. 91

Paul
Goble

Staunton, July 14 -- The flood of news
stories from a country as large, diverse and strange as the Russian Federation
often appears to be is far too large for anyone to keep up with. But there
needs to be a way to mark those which can’t be discussed in detail but which
are too indicative of broader developments to ignore.

Consequently, Windows on Eurasia each week
presents a selection of these other and typically neglected stories at the end
of each week. This is the 91st such compilation, and it is again a
double issue with 26 from Russia and 13 from Russia’s neighbors. Even then, it
is far from complete, but perhaps one or more of these stories will prove of
broader interest.

9.Non-Russian
Diasporas inside Russian Federation Increasingly Active.Moscow talks all the time about ethnic
Russians in the former Soviet republics, but few give much attention to the
presence of non-Russian diasporas in the Russian Federation, both those from
neighboring countries and those from non-Russian republics within Russia. The
Ukrainian “wedges” are perhaps the best known, but others are becoming more
active as well. A case in point this week involved the restoration of a
Belarusian church in Irkutsk (nazaccent.ru/content/24693-v-irkutskoj-oblasti-vosstanovyat-hram-postroennyj.html).

14.A Quieter Week on
the Monuments Front.Fights over monuments dwindled this past
week as conflicts shifted from the streets to the court rooms about Orthodox
Church efforts to seize property that it claims should belong to it. There were
disputes about the Yeltsin Center and the remains of the Imperial Family as
well, but the most prominent development were the erection of a Nicholas II bas
relief in the railroad station in Vladivostok (ruskline.ru/news_rl/2017/07/14/napominanie_o_velichii_russkogo_samoderzhaviya/)
and the vandalization of various monuments in Belgorod oblast (regnum.ru/news/accidents/2299342.html).

17.Making ‘The
Motherland Calls’ a Beer Advertisement Outrages Russians.A beer factory has put the iconic “The
Motherland Calls” on its factory and labels, outraging Russians who feel that
demeans an important national symbol (regnum.ru/news/society/2298785.html).

18.Krasnoyarsk
Deputies Talk about Raising Pay for Doctors and Librarians but Do So Only for
Themselves.
The decision of the Krasnoyarsk parliament to raise salaries for its members
after discussing but deciding not to raise the pay of doctors and libraries has
outraged many in Russia (http://www.rbc.ru/politics/14/07/2017/5968bf799a79473746fa1822).

19.Youngest
Politicians Now Have No Memory of USSR. Politicians younger than 40 have no real
memories of the Soviet Union, simultaneously reducing their inclination to want
to restore its conditions while increasing the likelihood that they will accept
rose-colored nostalgia about what life was like 30 and more years ago (lenta.ru/articles/2017/07/11/youth/).

22.Russia Should
Welcome and Ally Itself with Islamicized Europe, Nationalist Says. A Russian
nationalist says that Russia shouldn’t fear but rather welcome and ally itself
with an Islamicized Europe but avoid doing so with the continent as long as it
is dominated by Protestants or Catholics, the latest iteration of Alexander
Nevsky’s decision to ally with the Muslim Mongols to fight the Catholic Church
(proza.ru/2017/07/11/1036).

24.Rosstat Predicts
Working-Age Russians Will Fall 400,000 Annually by mid-2030s. The Russian state
statistical agency says that the size of the Russian working-age population
will decline by 400,000 or more beginning in the mid-2030s and extending as far
into the future as its experts can predict (ng.ru/economics/2017-07-13/4_7028_starenie.html).

25.Medvedev Now So
Unpopular He Doesn’t Campaign for Others. Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev is now so
deeply unpopular that he is not campaigning for any governors, quite likely at
their request, Moscow papers say (echo.msk.ru/news/2017644-echo.html).

26.Matviyenko Challenges Medvedev in Marie Antoinette
Race.One of the reasons Medvedev is so unpopular
is his propensity for making “let them eat cake” comments. But now Federation
Council speaker Valentina Matviyenko appears to be challenging the prime
minister in that competition. At a time when housing is hard to come by even
for working Russians, she has advised university students who can’t find places
in dormitories to simply go out and buy an apartment. Such rooms won’t be
large, she says; but they will be sufficient (bbc.com/russian/features-40583317).

6.Will
There Be a Russian Base in Belarus?Analysts say that Minsk is again considering
whether to yield to Moscow’s pressure to allow the opening of a permanent
Russian military base on Belarusian territory (nmnby.eu/news/analytics/6377.html).
But despite or perhaps even because of that, Belarus has backed Ukraine rather
than Russia on an important vote at the OSCE (ng.ru/cis/2017-07-10/2_7025_belorus.html).

7.Central Asian
Gastarbeiters Sent Six Billion US Dollars Home in 2016. Russian banks say
that Central Asian workers in the Russian Federation sent six billion US
dollars back to their homelands last year, a measure of just how important this
group is for their economies and for Russia’s as well (banki.ru/news/lenta/?id=9864314).

8.Kazakhstan Falls
in Line with Russia on Jehovah’s Witnesses. A disturbing new trend is the
increasing inclination of post-Soviet states to fall in line with Moscow on
some of its most repressive policies. The latest example: a Kazakhstan court
has now banned the Jehovah’s Witnesses from operating in that country (fergananews.com/news/26602).

10.Security in
Russia’s Client State of Abkhazia So Bad that Russian Embassy Cautions
Visitors.In what is
anything but an advertisement for Moscow’s policies, the Russian embassy to the
unrecognized state of Abkhazia has warned Russians visiting that breakaway
republic to be careful because of the danger of violence (kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/305945/).

12.Moldovans are Orthodox But Don’t want Church to
Interfere in Politics.Most Moldovans identify as Orthodox but tell
pollsters that they oppose the kind ofinterference in public life by the church as an institution frequently
on public view in Russia (euroradio.fm/ru/5-mirskih-zabav-moldavskoy-cerkvi).